Sales and reception
Between October 1989 and July 1990, Compaq sold a combined 84,777 units between the LTE and LTE/286.[23] Between July and August 1990 alone, Compaq sold an additional 10,011 units between the two models.[24] By December of that year, Compaq passed the 100,000 unit mark.[25] Compaq was slower to sell the LTE/386s at first, with only roughly 2,700 units being purchased between November 1990 and the end of February 1991.[26] Between March and June 1991, Compaq sold 35,231 units of the LTE/386s, and between June and September 1991, the company sold 31,356 units.[27]
The LTE and LTE/286 received glowing praise in the computing press, with InfoWorld Sherwin Levinson calling the LTE/286 in particular a "breakthrough for portable computing" that "combines power and battery life unlike any we've seen in so small and light a package".[9] Levinson rated the LTE/286's processor nearly twice as fast as the NEC V20 used in the UltraLite while almost nearing the performance seen in Zenith Data Systems' much-larger SupersPort 286.[9] He further wrote that the magazine's review board found that "[in] testing the LTE/286 we found the size, weight, and battery life an unmitigated joy",[9] while holding reservations about the passive-matrix display, which was susceptible to interference patterns caused by crosstalk.[9] PC World featured the LTE on the front cover of their December 1989 issue; in it, reviewer Eric Knorr wrote: "Compatible, capacious mass storage makes the LTE series a genuine breakthrough. Forget about the UltraLite's credit-card-ROM applications and the MinisPort's 2-inch floppy drive."[28] While finding the LTE's keyboard layout and keyfeel inferior to that of the MinisPort and decrying the lack of a docking station option on the initial LTE models as "effectively rul[ing] out the systems as primary machines", Knorr wrote that, "Quibbles like these aside, the LTEs seem certain to sell like snow chains in ski season".[28]
Mitt Jones of PC Magazine called the LTE and LTE/286, "without reservation, the most exciting and usable laptops on the market", albeit very expensive at over US$3,500 and $5,000 at launch, respectively.[8] Of the 80C86-based LTE, Jones wrote called the machine "somewhat miraculous ... In the same way the UltraLite seemed impossible for its size [in 1988], the LTE seems impossible now".[29] He opined that the power-efficient nature of the 80C86 did not warrant the same heavy battery as that of the LTE/286 but found, as a consequence, the laptop lasted over five hours on a single charge, without any power-conservation features enabled.[29] Fredric Burke of the same publication, reviewing the LTE/286 a year after its release, called it "the class act in its field", praising its expandability, the legibility of the LCD, and the performance of the battery.[13]
Patrick Lyons, reviewing the LTE/386s in InfoWorld, called it "well designed and powerful", as well as the fastest notebook computer the magazine had reviewed up to that point in early 1991.[30] In PC Magazine, the LTE/386s was featured on the front page of their March 12, 1991, issue, where the review board evaluated it as the fastest-performing 386-class notebook in terms of conventional memory writes, file access in MS-DOS, and DOS API–initiated disk seeks; it also scored high marks in number-crunching power and graphical performance.[31] Reviewer Greg Pastrick wrote that "Price considerations are always important, but the LTE/386s's functionality, performance, and expansion possibilities justify its place in business and industry".[31] Joseph Desposito of the same publication was less impressed with the laptop a little less than a year after its introduction, writing: "Unless you need the Compaq name on your notebook, you'll find more elsewhere, and for less".[32] Sesposito found reservation with the reverse-L-shaped arrow keys of the keyboard, which he deemed annoying to use.[32]
